Leadership and The Golden Circle

I followed a link in a tweet from @semanticwill to a blog post on UXLeadership (highly recommended). The post highlights a video where TEDx presenter and brainiac anthropologist Simon Sinek illuminates a concept he call the Golden Circle: three concentric circles, form the center out:

Why?

How?

What?

Sinek’s argument is that many try unsuccessfully to construct their business, their conversations, their arguments, their products, from the bottom up. But there are a few, far more effective, who communicate from the top of that list down.

One of his key examples is Martin Luther King Jr, a man with a strong set of principles that guided all his actions and decisions. His inner principles, the “why”, were so deeply internalized by others that they can then take on the cause, not just follow through with the actions.

As Sinek says, people didn’t attend the march on Washington for Dr. King, they did it for themselves.

In looking at this through a business lens, I see some of the same tenets described in Built to Last. Visionary Companies, as described by Collins, each have a set of core values. However, there are some examples of core values that stand out as a compass for the company on the “why” level that Sinek is talking about–a deeper cause.

One of Sony’s core values is an ongoing effort to improve the standing of Japanese culture in the minds of people across the world. This is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the company was formed in 1946 when perception of Japan was mixed at best, nuclear at worst. In this case, you could frame the Golden Circle in a business context by adding “work” in some capacity to each layer.

Why do we work? To improve the standing of Japanese culture in the minds of people across the world.

How do we work? With diligence and innovation.

What do we work on? The Walkman, Playstation, Blu-Ray, Cell phone etc.

The “What” makes a lot more sense when you arrive at that point as a conclusion stemming from the “Why.” The same can not be said if the argument were carried in the opposite direction.

In my own working situations, I often ask colleagues and clients to bear with me while we work together, because I will ask “Why” on a seemingly never-ending basis. The absence of a “why” in a company, project, or task, gives rise to doubt, boredom, poor production. It is, in many cases, a lack of leadership.

The push for excellence demands finding the “why” whether someone else provides it or if one must find it themselves.